


you clicked your heels and wished for me

by xlightless



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Awkward Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9319532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xlightless/pseuds/xlightless
Summary: The new farmer seems to have a habit of overworking himself far too often. Harvey doesn’t know why he won’t just ask for help.





	

It’s been a full year and a half since Parker moved into the valley, and Harvey is amazed at how reckless he still is. At midnight, Parker stumbles into the town square back from the mines, covered in dirt and slime. Harvey doesn’t normally stay up so late, but he’s been working on a new plane and he lost track of time. He looks out his apartment window, staring at Parker’s walk down the steps and onto the dirt path leading back to his farm. He yawns as he trudges through the pouring rain with his pickaxe in hand, his sword swinging at the side of his hips, and his backpack bulging against his back.

Harvey frowns. He can see Parker’s farm, a blurred glowing speck past the path in the downpour. He remembers the first time he met Parker. Robin found him behind their house, just past Linus’ tent, collapsed in a bed of wild flowers. He’d barely been in town for a season, and he was already exploring the mines. Robin called Harvey, carried Parker on her back, and brought him into the clinic. 

Since then, he’s been brought back nearly twenty more times in this year alone, either passed out from exhaustion or on the verge of bleeding out every liter of blood in his body. It’s a miracle he isn’t dead yet.

Harvey watches Parker for another moment, wondering how far he’ll get before he passes out. He stumbles over his own feet, his pickaxe hitting the ground to catch himself before he falls over. Harvey sighs, shrugging into a coat and fetching his umbrella. He walks down the stairs, through the clinic, and out into the rain.

“Parker!” he calls out, stopping just before the lamp.

Parker spins around, squinting dark eyes that glint like obsidian in the low light. “Harv? What are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Harvey gestures to the clinic behind him. “Come inside. It’s late and you’re soaking wet.”

Harvey sees Parker’s hesitation. He rocks back and forth on his heels and blinks in uncertainty. “Thanks, Harv, but I… My farm is right there, and––“ He points behind him, but his farm is still another twenty minute walk from here, and he looks like he’s on the verge of collapsing.

Harvey shakes his head. “You’ll get sick. Besides, I know you just came from the mines. Don’t pretend you don’t need your wounds treated.”

Parker slumps his shoulders, finally giving in, and begins walking to Harvey. 

“You are such a dad,” he says as he walks past him into the clinic, but there’s no venom in his voice, and he catches a playful glint in his eyes. 

Parker stands on the mat by the door, shivering and dripping wet. After Harvey locks the front door, he drops the umbrella into a bucket beside his feet and signals for Parker to follow him into the examination room. Parker nods, holding his pickaxe close. Harvey sees a thin rivulet of blood run down his arm. 

“Let me get some towels.” Harvey hurries up into his apartment, leaving Parker inside the room.

When he comes back, he sees Parker’s backpack shoved into the corner, Parker’s clothes laid out on the table beside him, and Parker sitting on the table in nothing but his underwear. Harvey is a doctor––has been for about five years––so he’s grown used to seeing patients in little more than flimsy strips of cloth. Though, that isn’t enough to prepare him for the muscular curve of Parker’s thighs, the solid line of his shoulders, and the jagged scars littering his skin. 

A massive bruise stretches from the top of his right shoulder and spreads throughout his mid-back, spots of dark maroon overlapping with deep purple. An acid burn stretches down his left arm, blackened and singed skin surrounding bright red and pale white, the skin bubbling in some places.

Parker turns to look at Harvey, his cheeks turning red as he wraps his arms around himself. “Sorry, I had to get out of my clothes…”

Harvey just smiles, the one he gives all his patients, and drapes a towel over Parker’s lap. He’s still shivering. Harvey gestures to Parker’s arm. “It’s alright. What…happened?”

“Slimes,” Parker replies in a voice that’s nearly drowned out in the sound of rain hitting the windows. 

That only explains the acid burns. “And the bruise?”

He laughs once, a quick exhale that’s half-berating. “Shadow brute.”

Shadow brutes appear only in the lowest levels of the mines. Why did he go so far down? Harvey pulls on a pair of rubber gloves, and Parker continues talking.

“It threw me against a wall. Should have known better than to take it on, but…” Parker trails off, looking down at his dangling feet.

Silence falls over them as Harvey inspects Parker’s arm. He hears Parker’s soft breaths beneath the pounding rain and the rush of his blood in his ears. Harvey’s never seen him this bad before. There’s even more bruising on the underside of his arm, four horizontal lines stacked on top of one another. 

Harvey realizes it’s shaped like a hand. He tries not to imagine a shadow brute grabbing onto Parker’s arm. He tries not to imagine it flinging Parker against a wall. He tries not to imagine Parker crumbling to the ground, hot enough to sear his skin. Harvey blinks and forces himself to focus. He fights his own mind for clarity.

A full hour passes before Harvey finishes cleaning and treating the wounds on Parker’s body. The bruises should be gone by the next season. He leans back when he finishes wrapping the bandage around Parker’s arm, letting out a sigh and his shoulders slump.

“Thanks, Harv,” Parker says, hopping down from the examination table. He picks up his damp pants and makes a disgusted face as he shimmies into them. He slips into his thread-bare shirt and sweater. “Sorry to bother you so late at night.”

Harvey stares at Parker shoulder his backpack, careful of his arm and wincing as he readjusts the straps. He takes off his gloves and tosses them in the trash. “You can stay here for the night, you know.”

Parker hesitates, rocking back and forth on his heels. He bites his bottom lip. 

Harvey begins to clean up the supplies.

“Harv.” Parker places a hand on Harvey’s shoulder. He looks into Parker’s eyes, warm jade meeting dark obsidian. “Thanks, but I think I can make it back fine.”

Thunder booms outside. Harvey can’t let him walk alone through this storm. “It’s alright. You can sleep on one of the beds down here.”

“ _Harvey_.” Parker’s voice is quiet, but insistent. 

“What?” His voice comes out harsher than he intends.

Parker blinks. He lets go of Harvey’s shoulder. He doesn’t break eye contact, but he grabs onto Harvey’s hand. “I just hate bothering you so much.”

Is _that_ it? Harvey is speechless. He smiles, but it’s different from the one saved for his patients. This one feels genuine on his lips. He sighs. “You don’t need to worry about me. Really, you’re more than welcome to stay here.”

Parker bites his bottom lip again. He eventually lets go of Harvey’s hand and drops his backpack on the ground. He sighs and runs a hand through his short hazelnut hair. “Fine. Let me help you clean up, then.”

Harvey watches as Parker heads to the supply closet and pull out a tube of disinfectant wipes. 

“Why do you go back?” Harvey asks when he comes back. “You know it’s dangerous, and you nearly die every time you go in.”

Parker pulls out a wipe and cleans the table. He scoffs. “Let me live, Harv.”

“Parker, I’m being serious.”

Parker is a solid couple inches shorter than Harvey, but his presence easily dominates Harvey’s. He crosses his arms above his chest, and stares into Harvey’s eyes. “So am I.”

“I worry about you.” And that suddenly sounds too personal when it’s said in a hushed baritone, so he adds a quieter, “ _Plenty_ of people in town worry about you.”

Parker’s fingers play at the hanging thread on his shirt and sighs. Harvey glances at him as he throws away the bloody cotton swabs. Parker looks so vulnerable, nothing like the cheerful farmer the entire town has grown to care about in their own ways.

“I’m not a child, Harv. I can take care of myself.”

Harvey begins to splutter. “I-I didn’t mean that. I meant…” He stops and takes a deep breath before continuing. “There are plenty of people here who will gladly help you out if you just let them. You don’t have to push them away.” 

Parker’s eyes flit from side to side. He looks like a scared animal, ready to flee at the slightest movement. Harvey doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he speaks. “I just…don’t like being a burden.”

Harvey’s eyes widen. Robin appears in his mind, her voice full of adoration as she follows him down the hall for her yearly check-up. _You know Parker gave Seb a frozen tear for his birthday and he helped Maru with some research down in the mines. Normally, I hate the place, but when he comes out with these stories about crystals on the walls and the monsters he fights, he almost makes me want to go down there myself just to see it all._  


Harvey thinks about every person who’s talked about Parker at one point or another, not one of them negative.

And he thinks he’s being a _burden?_  


“Nobody would ever think that,” Harvey says. 

Parker frowns. He throws the wipe onto the table and balls his hands into fists, his knuckles turning white. “How can you even know that?”

“Because,” Harvey pauses to think of his next words, “You’ve helped out so many people since you got here, and you’re so kind to everyone. A town this small will inevitably talk about everybody. I know this might make you angry, but everybody talks about you, and they _all_ love you. They will not hesitate to help you out if you ever need it.”

Parker is quiet for a long moment. He stares at Harvey, but he isn’t looking _at_ him, merely _past_ him. His obsidian eyes turn glassy and tears begin to well in his eyes until they roll down his cheeks.

Harvey freezes, his eyes widening. He blinks and holds a tentative hand towards Parker. He doesn’t know what to do. He took one psychology class in college, and it was just an introductory course. “Parker?”

Parker wipes his tears with the heels of his palms and laughs, different from the first one. Confused. Fighting through sobs. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just…” He pauses to wipe his eyes again. “I don’t think I’ve ever had this many people genuinely care about me before.” He laughs, sniffling behind his hand. “That sounds sadder than I meant it to.”

Harvey hands Parker the tissue box. He takes it gratefully and wipes his nose. “I know what you mean.”

Parker raises an eyebrow behind the tissue.

Harvey grew up and went to college in Zuzu City. He knows how impersonal city life can get. He once lived in an apartment building that had more residents living on a single floor than the people living in Pelican Town. He was surrounded by _so_ many people, but it was overwhelming and he’d never felt more alone in his life. When he moved to Pelican Town, he felt a warmth in the valley he never would have felt in between Zuzu City’s steel skyscrapers.

Harvey takes the disinfectant wipes and cleans the table again just to give himself something to do so he doesn’t have to look into those crystal eyes. “Living in the city can get extremely stressful, but you knew that already. What I’m trying to get at is that you can become isolated in communities that big, and that isn’t healthy mentally. The community here is good for that, and I know it gets overbearing sometimes, but they have good intentions.”

Parker draws in a shaking breath before replying with a joking, “I never thought you were a city boy.”

Harvey smiles. “It’s something I don’t really share with other people.”

He knows this isn’t something that will fix itself overnight, but he feels like this is a step in the right direction. They stand in silence for a heartbeat before he clears his throat. “Let me get you something to sleep in.”

//

Harvey heads down to the clinic the next morning and finds Parker gone. His pajamas are folded on the bed with a note on top.

_Thanks for letting me sleep here. Remind me to pay you back sometime_. 

_\- Parker_

Harvey folds the note and tucks it into his pocket before scooping up his pajamas into his arms.

Parker walks into the clinic around ten with a cup of coffee in his hand. He has dark circles beneath his eyes, but he’s smiling nonetheless. “Hey, Harv! Brought you some coffee.”

Harvey smiles as Parker leans against the front counter. He sips the coffee. There’s an earthy bitterness to it that tells him it’s made from the beans Parker grew this season. Gus’s coffee tastes nothing like this. “Well, thank you. How’s your arm?”

“Alright. I’ve got some pain meds back home.” Parker lights up and begins digging around through his backpack. “Oh, I should give this to you before I forget again.” He takes out a bundle wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.

Harvey furrows his eyebrows, but Parker only smiles as he unties it. 

“That shadow brute was holding it, and I thought it was perfect.” Parker holds out a prismatic shard, glinting in the sunlight and splaying every color against the walls.

Harvey takes the shard into his own hands, holding it up into the light. “This is great, but how is it perfect?”

Parker blinks. Panic begins to settle in his widening eyes and a deep red blush spreads up his neck to his ears. “B-because, you know… Rainbows. And, uh. Gay. _I’m_ gay. For _you?_ And oh Yoba, you know what? Never mind, sorry I gave this to you.”

Before Parker can take the shard back, Harvey takes it into his hand and laughs. “Thank you, Parker, really.”

Parker buries his head in his hand. “No, that was lame. I’m sorry.”

Harvey takes Parker’s hand into his own and squeezes. Parker looks up with those shining obsidian eyes, first at their hands, then at Harvey himself, and bursts out laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> i just started playing stardew valley because of the steam winter sale and who'd have thought that writing doctor husband is good for writer's block


End file.
